A ward councillor has warned Alsager residents that their household recycling centre is going to be "greatly impacted" by the closure of Congleton's tip.

The site located off Barn Road is due to close in September 2021, as the lease on the land is up, and planning documents show Bluemantle, the owner has earmarked it to become a Costa coffee drive-through outlet.

Cheshire East does not own the lease at the existing site in Congleton, but in February 2020, the authority approved a £4million budget for a new purpose-built recycling site for Congleton.

Although the current lease expires in September 2021, there is a break clause included in the contract, which means the owner of the site could close the tip before then if they gave Cheshire East "sufficient notice".

As a direct result, this would mean Cheshire East would have to commission and fund the creation of a new facility in Congleton – a capital cost of around £4m leading to around £250,000 per year in additional costs for the council.

Whilst the council's Medium Term Financial Strategy – their budget plans for the next four years - includes £4m for Congleton HWRC, it is within the addendum to their capital programme.

This means that it could only go ahead once a detailed business case has been approved to make sure the proposal is affordable.

As a result, Cheshire East proposed that they do not replace Congleton's HWRC with a new facility once the lease of the current site comes to an end.

The nearest alternative sites for residents served by Congleton HWRC are Alsager (around eight miles away) and Macclesfield (around six miles away).

A new contract for the delivery of the household waste recycling service in the borough needs to be commissioned and be operational by the end of March 2023.

However, once procurement of Cheshire East's new HWRC contract were undertaken, the authority may have to make further recommendations to close further sites, which would be dependent on the cost of the new contract.

Congleton ward councillor, Cllr Sally Ann Holland (Conservative) said: "I think Macclesfield and Alsager should be very concerned because their population is going to be greatly impacted by the number of people visiting those recycling sites.

"The site in Congleton is used a great, great deal and during COVID when it was closed, it caused a huge amount of problems."

The potential impact on the Alsager and Macclesfield sites because of Congleton's closure was highlighted yesterday despite a national lockdown being in place and the Congleton site still being open.

A Macclesfield South Police spokesperson said yesterday (Sunday, 28th February): "There are currently long delays on Congleton Road around the tip.

"It seems the sun has made a lot of people want to visit it. Please try to avoid Congleton Road to not get stuck in the queues and use a different tip located nearby if you need to get rid of some stuff."

Responding to the police's plea to avoid the Macclesfield tip, Cllr Holland said: "The return of some sunny weather at the weekend brought such long queues of traffic at the Macclesfield tip that the police had to appeal for residents to go to the tip later in the week.

"What on earth would it have been like if that tip had been dealing with Congleton residents as well."

Last Sunday, Cllr Holland travelled to Alsager, Macclesfield and Congleton's recycling centres to get a gauge on how busy the tips were during a third national lockdown.

Cllr Holland told Nub News: "Clearly there is something adrift with decision makers at Cheshire East and I fear they may underestimate the intelligence of our general public; we have been informed that our treasured tip is under-utilised and in line with government guidance we can travel 20 minutes to Macclesfield or Alsager to dispose of our rubbish."

A last-ditch bid to save Congleton's household waste recycling centre has been suggested by Cheshire East councillors.

At last month's Environment and Regeneration Overview and Scrutiny Committee, councillors voted 8-3 to ask the borough's officers to make one final attempt to purchase the land the tip is located on.